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The Mapes are a very food-oriented band. Raw meat and hot dogs have been known to fly during their live shows, much to the annoyance of vegetarians. The band lives for post-concert snacks at fast food joints like Del Taco, where they’ve been known to create concoctions like the Chicken Cheese Burgaco – a Del Taco chicken sandwich stuffed into a taco along with a cheeseburger. The group even solidified a fan base, their army of “Mankeys,” when a bunch of eager listeners arrived at their house with a giant box of tacos.

Guitarist Dave Post says his ideal show would be one when The Mapes aren’t the last group to play so they could make it to Del Taco before “the crappy graveyard shift takes over.” Drummer Clay Heximer even boasts the nickname Sir-Snax-A-Lot.

Of course, they make music in between taco runs. Despite being together for 10 years, the band just put out their first self-titled disc and will be celebrating Friday night at The Bunkhouse along with Monster Zero, The Bitters, The Black Jetts and Brant Bjork and the Brothers. Weekly caught up with the band and found out how they’ve survived a decade and what their moms think of songs like “Feed Us Fetus.”

How have you kept your band together for 10 years?

Clay Heximer: By not playing or ever practicing. We did practice today, but it’s not really practice if it’s two covers and one original.

Kirk Kangieser (guitar): Our set list is usually five songs played multiple times.

Jason Wilda (bass): Well, we had a bunch of weirdos who used to show up at our house parties and all our shows and knew everything about us and we didn’t even know their names. We started calling them Mankeys. We kind of stopped playing together for a while, then we noticed there was this whole new group of Mankeys who knew all The Mapes songs.

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Clay: They would just show up at our house with a box of a hundred tacos from like Del Taco or Jack-in-the-Box after we played shows.

Jason: And if they weren’t there, we really wouldn’t be playing. We get stoked that they come and they bring a bunch of food, then we start throwing food and everybody starts throwing food. … Without the new group of Mankeys, I don’t think we’d even play anymore. If no one is there throwing beer at us, it’s almost considered a shit show.

With two of you having day jobs and two having night jobs, when do you find time to practice?

Jason: We don’t!

Allison Duck

Dave Post, guitarist for The Mapes, shows off his flexibility at a Neon Reverb show at The Thunderbird Lounge.

Kirk: We like to treat every show as band practice. Our shows are practice… for the next show.

How many songs do you have in your rotation if this is your first CD after 10 years of playing together?

Clay: Rotation?

Jason: We’ve been playing together since 1999 so we have like eight songs by now. We have 10 on the CD and two of them never even existed before we recorded them.

You wrote them on the spot in the studio?

Jason: We wrote “Mouf” the day before because we needed another song to put on the album.

Clay: We don’t remember how to play it anymore. You’ll never hear it live, because we don’t remember how to play it.

Jason: The other one we did on the spot was the Willie Nelson cover of “I Gotta Get Drunk.”

What is your songwriting process like?

Jason: With songs like “Feed Us Fetus” we just wrote funny lyrics that made us laugh. We were just dicking around. The chords are asinine and juvenile. The whole song is juvenile, but when we were all done it made us all laugh.

Do your moms know all of your song titles?

Jason: I hope not!

Clay: My mom does and she doesn’t approve. She laughs though. She says “that’s terrible,” but she laughs. Our friend put the CD on in his living room for his girlfriend the other day and the first track is “Your Pussy Makes Me Vomit.” He pushed play, it played for about 15 seconds then she just walked out of the room.

Do you ever come up with a song concept and wonder if it is just too over the top, too vulgar?

All: NO!

Jason: I though it was borderline when we recorded “I Hope You’re Just Getting Fat,” which goes “If you’re pregnant, I’m going to kick you down the stairs,” while Dave’s wife was pregnant.

Kirk: I based it on the chord progression from some sweet tender love song and I thought, “How can I make this dirty?” It’s basically my attempt at a Weird Al Yankovic parody song. Then Dave’s wife got pregnant, so he dedicates it to her at every show.

Dave: Yeah, it really gets her in the mood.

Do you have a favorite song to play live?

Clay: “Me So Horny” is fun.

Jason: We play it with an air horn and nobody sings. It’s just the power chord E for a long time and a horn.

How do people react to your intense lyrics when they see you for the first time?

Clay: There’s a moment at almost every show where I look up and I see a guy laughing and a girlfriend punching him in the arm. At least once every show, it’s almost always during “I Hope You’re Just Getting Fat.”

What is the craziest thing you have ever had thrown at you during a show?

Allison Duck

Clay: I got hit in the balls with a pig hoof once.

Jason: We used to bring piñatas full of raw meat and hotdogs. Because of all that we couldn’t play in any venues in Vegas. That’s why it took us so long to put an album out. We would only play like twice a year. We got a vegetarian to puke once.

Any warnings for fans coming out to tomorrow night’s CD release show?

Dave: The slipperiest thing in the world is bananas and hotdogs. Bananas, hotdogs and cowboy boots. That’ll be the name of our best of record.